Original artwork description:

One night while watching television I stumbled upon this gameshow called Lingo
where two teams have to guess a word within a maximum of five turns. Here you see
team 1 with candidates Maarten and Wessel trying to guess a five letter word that starts with a 'P'.

I thought it would be a great idea to freeze time and just quietly observe what I was watching: two guys standing behind a desk filled with balls in a candy colored environment playing a silly game on national television for my enjoyment.

I thought it was pretty interesting to transfer an image from one media (television) to another (painting). Tv reality now became painting reality and to me that makes a huge difference.

This scene also reminded me of something that social critic Neil Postman once wrote in one his books. He said: 'A culture fully dedicated to entertainment becomes a trivial culture. Culture death becomes a clear possibility.'

And elsewhere Postman wrote: 'The problem isn't that we're laughing instead of thinking, but that we don't know what we're laughing about and why we stopped thinking.'

So I also view this painting as a warning sign of the dangers of too much entertainment. Too much of it reduces us to passivity and egoism. At least that's how I feel about it.

Materials used:

Acrylic on masonite

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